Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

‘You’ll have to sit on the bed, I’m afraid,’ said Stegs, taking the seat at the desk and manoeuvring himself round so he was just about facing the spot where he wanted us to sit. ‘I don’t really want the missus hearing any of this. Can you shut the door please, John?’

I did as he asked and then the two of us sat down side by side on the bed facing him. It was all very cosy.

‘What can I do for you then?’ he asked.

‘We’ve got some bad news, Stegs,’ said Tina.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’

‘Slim Robbie O’Brien’s dead.’

He looked shocked. ‘How did that happen, then? And when?’

‘He was shot. We don’t have a time of death yet.’

We let it sink in for a few moments, watching him. He rubbed a hand across his brow, the other hand drumming a rapid tattoo on the side of the chair. I thought he looked stressed. His face had taken on a reddish tinge and he appeared pumped up, making me think that he might be suffering from some sort of delayed shock. I wondered briefly whether he’d been offered counselling. If not, he should have been.

‘Christ,’ he muttered, wiping the hand back across his forehead. ‘That’s not going to make things any easier.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Quite the reverse.’

‘Who do you think could have done it?’ he asked.

‘Slim Robbie O’Brien? I imagine the list of suspects is going to be pretty long. When did you last see him?’

‘I said all this yesterday evening.’

‘Humour us, Stegs. We wouldn’t ask unless we had to.’

‘Last Sunday night at a pub called the Shakespeare near Barbican Tube. Me and Vokes met up with him.’

‘You said yesterday O’Brien was involved in setting up the final meeting,’ said Tina in formal tones, looking up from her note-taking. Stegs eyed her suspiciously as she continued. ‘What part did he play exactly?’

Stegs sighed. ‘Quite a few of SO10 got involved in setting up yesterday, but Fellano was suspicious of blokes he didn’t know so he wanted to keep O’Brien in the loop because he trusted him. That meant O’Brien was the main man who kept in contact with him between the test-buy we did at the end of Feb and the final meeting. Me and Vokes also had a couple of conversations with Fellano as well — you know, just to show that we were keen — and I know that he was using contacts in this country to check the two of us out. But he still liked to talk to O’Brien, which is what me and Vokes were meeting him about in the pub. O’Brien was getting worried that when the op went down and Fellano got nicked it was going to be pretty bloody obvious who was behind it. In fact, he wasn’t just worried, he was scared shitless. He was talking about pulling out.’

‘But you managed to reassure him?’ said Tina.

He nodded. ‘Well, yeah, obviously. But he still wasn’t very happy about it. He started harping on about us having to get him a new identity with all the trimmings if it all went wrong. I told him we’d see what we could do, but we weren’t going to promise anything.’

I cleared my throat, thinking that I was very thirsty and could do with a cup of tea. Somehow, though, I didn’t think one would be forthcoming. I got the distinct impression Stegs didn’t like our presence in his house, though I suppose you could hardly blame him. No-one likes being questioned by the police, particularly the police. ‘But you said last night he didn’t know the actual location of the meet itself.’

‘He didn’t. He knew roughly when Fellano was going to be flying in. .’

‘And that was?’

‘I think he came in Tuesday night. Late.’

‘So who set up the actual location for the rendezvous?’

‘Fellano did. He spoke to me on Tuesday night. I phoned Vokes afterwards.’

‘And Fellano said that the meeting was going to be at the Donmar Hotel?’

Stegs shook his head. ‘No. He told me that the meeting was going to go ahead on the Wednesday, yesterday, but he didn’t say where, because they like to leave that sort of thing until the last minute. It’s safer that way. But SO11 had a tap on my phone and they used it to trace his call to the vicinity of the Donmar, so we concluded it was almost certainly going to be there. And at that point it became common knowledge among everyone on the op, which was what? Ten o’clock Tuesday night. That gave it eighteen hours to leak.’

‘Well, not really,’ I said. ‘You and Vokes knew because the information on the location of Fellano’s mobile was relayed to you by DCS Flanagan. He knew, obviously, as did the operator who actually pinpointed the call, and Malik, I believe, because he was with Flanagan at the time. But they were the only ones. We weren’t made aware of it’ — I pointed to myself and to Tina — ‘until we arrived at New Scotland Yard yesterday morning for the briefing. Neither was anyone else on the team. It was a very secretive operation, as you for one ought to appreciate.’

‘So you didn’t speak to O’Brien at all at any point after you found out the location of the meeting?’ asked Tina.

The big question.

‘No.’ There was the first sign of annoyance in his voice. Then his expression changed. ‘Hold on, tell a lie, I had a quick twenty-second conversation with him on the way into work yesterday morning. He rang me on my private mobile, the one I give to people who know my real identity. He was hassling me about what we were going to do to protect him when everything was over. I told him it was out of my hands, but that he’d definitely get protection. I hung up on him. That was it. As far as I know, Vokes didn’t speak to him either. There’d have been no point.’

‘Where were you when you made the call to Vokes on Tuesday night?’ I asked.

‘I was here, at home. In this very room, in fact, and I stayed at home for the rest of the night. You can ask the missus if you want. Or SO11. They’d have a record of the call and where it was made from. I’m not hiding anything, you know.’

I put up a hand to calm him. ‘Listen, Stegs, we’re not here to interrogate you or pick holes in any of your answers, we’re just trying to find out what, if anything, O’Brien knew which might have acted as a motive for someone killing him. You have to admit, the timing of his death is worryingly coincidental.’

Stegs sighed loudly. ‘Yeah, all right. Fair enough.’

He fidgeted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, and I noticed he was still sweating even though the room was cool.

‘Can you give us your movements for yesterday morning, Stegs?’ asked Tina, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘Starting from when you left the house.’

‘Hold on, am I a suspect for something?’ he demanded, trying hard to keep his voice calm. ‘Are you making out I murdered him? Because if you are, or you think I might possibly have done it, then I want to stop this right now until I’ve got a federation rep here, or even a lawyer.’

‘No-one’s saying any of that,’ Tina reassured him. ‘But you know the score. We wouldn’t be doing our duty if we didn’t eliminate everyone involved from our enquiries. It’s just routine.’

He didn’t look convinced but gave her a detailed rundown of his movements anyway, including the times. There was nothing untoward or inconsistent in anything he said. While Tina wrote it all down, he stood up, opened the window as wide as it would go, and lit a Marlboro Light, blowing a lungful of smoke into the drizzling dusk.

‘Whose idea was it to leave the money behind in the car when you went into the meeting, Stegs?’ asked Tina when she’d finished.

He took a long drag on the cigarette before he answered, then fixed her with an expression only just this side of contemptuous. ‘Both of ours,’ he answered simply, daring her to disagree.